“Steve McQueen’s Shame is the latest entry in what we’ll call the sad sex subgenre,” suggests Michael Koresky in Reverse Shot. “In a sad sex film, partners don’t enjoy each other’s flesh, they rut. They bump uglies. They shudder….

Ed Gonzalez in Slant: “Shame articulates a shallow, even mundane, understanding of an uninteresting man’s sex addiction — in a vibrant city rendered dull and anonymous. This self-serious elegy to a corporate drone’s debauchery begins like it ends, with Brandon (Michael Fassbender) debonairly sniffing for pussy on the subway; he misses out, as the target of his radioactive gaze doesn’t share the courage of his convictions, but Married Subway Girl’s loss is Every Other Woman In New York City’s gain.

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